Looking at my front cover

My music magazine includes a few genres of music but predominantly pop. Hip-hop is included which is why aspects of ‘Vibe’ is helpful when considering how to attract my target audience. My front cover is similar to the ‘Vibe’ front cover as they both have a large white masthead. I feel this white colour is eye-catching but also connotes hip-hop music because stereotypically vibrant diamond jewellery is seen and males in white suites is also a stereotypical view of hip-hop music. I feel the pose my female is making is also similar to the ‘Vibe’ pose because they both have their head tipped to the side and are looking at the camera although mine is more close up shot rather than a midshot. I chose to do challenge this convention because I think if the image is more realistic to real life size it draws the target audience in more because the artist looks more lifelike. I have included a skyline similar to ‘Vibe’ in order to make my magazine look more conventional and draw attention to other parts of my magazine. The main plug on the page is large and written across the page taking up a lot of room which I realised is a conventional feature in music magazines, I feel it is another technique used to grab the attention of the audience and it does this through the large, capitals written in a place on top of the image showing it’s dominance of the page and the rest of the magazine.

The font type is somewhat different to ‘Vibe’ because I didn’t want my magazine to look like a purely urban music magazine which after my research I have noticed that generally urban music magazines have more bubbly writing. Therefore because mine is a general pop music magazine i wanted to deter away from this stereotype and make my magazine look more classy with more roman looking letters.

Some audience feedback from my front cover in working progress...

The general point was that my masthead was effective and caught their eye therefore I didn’t go on to change this further.

Looking at my contents page

‘Q’ magazine has a target audience of a similar age range and status as mine therefore when looking at ‘Q’s’ contents page was influential. I have used a similar layout however different kinds of images to connote the pop music genre. I chose this layout because I thought it looked classy and therefore meeting my audiences expectations. I decided to use a different colour scheme with purple as my predominant colour purely because I felt it is a colour fashionable for males and females now which means this contents page will appeal to both genders. Although I like the connotations of the red colour I felt it means my magazine may look to similar to ‘Q’ and therefore would be too stronger competitors although the music genre is different. The font type I chose is fairly similar however I feel this is almost inevitable because I wanted something classy looking and not ‘bubbly’ because I feel this can look tacky on a magazine, yet I wanted something clear to read therefore similar fonts are used to that in ‘Q’ magazine.

Looking at my double page spread

The layout of my DPS was heavily influenced by the previous slides ‘Lady GaGa’ DPS. I really thought it looked classy and unique for my target audience. I chose to have one page an image which took up the whole page and the other a text which a large letter behind.

I typically followed my predominant colour of purple throughout my DPS by having purple tones in the main image. I chose the ‘J’ for the artists name ‘Jessica’ to be a dark grey as I found that purple tones were too girly and therefore not suiting the males as much. I found that my main image was similar to the main image to the left of my DPS in the previous slide in terms of props. I felt the use of furniture for props added a more personal feeling and therefore meeting audience’s needs because they are intregued to know about their desired artists.

Again the same font is followed throughout keeping a style consist throughout my products and again easy to read for my audience.